Delphi complete works of.., p.616
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 616
With the public executions came the funerals as scenes, not of merriment, but of the super-excitement bred from the very dullness of life. In such scenes does our perplexed humanity seek in a make-believe hilarity to cheat the finality of its despair. There was much drinking. “Our Ancestors,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, “were wont to steep their tough old hearts in drink and strong wine and indulge in an outbreak of grisly jollity.” We read that when a Connecticut youth David Porter was drowned in the river at Hartford in 1678, the sum of 1 shilling was spent for a pint of liquor for those who dived for him, 2 shillings for a quart of liquor for those who brought him home, 5 shillings for two quarts of wine and 1 gallon of cider for the jury of inquest who sat on him, and I pound 15 shillings for 8 gallons and 3 quarts of wine for the funeral. After that the 12 shillings spent on his coffin seems a mere afterthought.
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Literature loosened up and lightened up last. Only long after the exuberance and natural irreverence of youth laid a basis for the rise of humor did any such element appear in the books and writings of the Puritans in America. Such literature as struggled into life among them bore the stamp of their stern and wild surroundings, their fight for life, and their imminent sense of death. Here among their earliest productions is the first real printed book of New England, second only to an Almanac, the famous and venerable “Bay Psalm-Book” of the year 1640. The singing of psalms was notoriously a godly practice. It was looked upon as a vent for the natural merriment of which even a Puritan was guilty at times. The Psalm Book itself, quoting from the fifth Chapter of the Epistle of St. James, says, “If any be merry let him sing psalms.” Any of us today, looking at the rare old book, or a reproduction of it, would certainly feel that to sing it would take all the merriment out of us. But to the people of New England it was an object of love and veneration. They had brought with them various “psalm-books” like the “well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,” which Longfellow says lay in the lap of Priscilla (artful creature) when John Alden came to make love by proxy for Miles Standish. But the Puritans were not satisfied till they bought a press, fetched out an English printer and made “a psalm-book” — that is, a singing English version of the songs of David — of their own. To the cruel and irreverent eye of today it is a fearful and wonderful production. Its punctuation would have made Artemus Ward ashamed of his own. Plenty of the type came out upside down, and the spelling was without prejudice. But as Cotton Mather said of it, “God’s altar needs not our polishings.” To the Puritan it was by definition and purpose a merry book. One looks in vain in it for humor, except here and there a touch of that grim exultation over a fallen foe which is the basis of primitive laughter. Take for example the cheering verses, lustily sung, in which is described how “Jael the Kenite” (try Canaanite) woman killed Sisera:
He water asked: she gave him milk,
him butter forth she fetch’d
in lordly dish: then to the nail
She forth her left hand stretched.
Her right the workman’s hammer held
And Sisera struck dead:
She pierced and struck his temple through
And then smote off his head.
He at her feet, bow’d, fell, lay down,
he at her feet bow’d, where he fell: ev’n where
he bowed down he fell destroyed there.
There would seem from the text little doubt that Sisera fell down. The singing of this in loud and cheery unison, led by the notes of little wooden “pitch-pipes” (a compromise with music), must have been rather good fun. It may have been at such a verse as this that Tabatha Morgus started to snigger. But to get proper information on such a point one must turn to a real book on the subject such as Alice Earle’s book of half a century ago on The Sabbath in Puritan New England.
The Psalm Book came first. After that New England turned out sermons, works on religion and histories. Here we have The Wonder Working Providence of Zion’s Saviour in New England, a history of the settlement written by an Edward Johnson and published in London in 1654; Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Plantation; Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, and Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. None of this sounds very cheerful. Indeed it took New England pretty well a century to cheer up. The Harvard library of 1723, we are told, had not admitted Bolingbroke or Addison or Swift or Pope. Yet reading was spreading. Boston booksellers of Queen Anne’s time reaped a harvest, selling works on theology and “execution” sermons — preached at hangings and much sought after, such as Cotton Mather’s tribute to the pirate Captain. Then there were imported pamphlets, poems and plenty of Latin bound in vellum.
But the humblest of all the books was presently destined to outrank and outsell all other profane literature. This was the family Almanac, the parent spring in the rocks of Puritanism from which flowed the current that widened into American Humor. The first Almanac, as already said, had come to New England alongside of the Psalm Book. It was a necessary compilation for pioneer settlers who must needs keep track of days and months and seed time or harvest. The Almanac originally was but a sort of poor cousin of a real book. One recalls how Charles Lamb spoke of it as among “books which are no books.” But in New England, through force of circumstances, it gathered into itself all kinds of useful, miscellaneous and even facetious matter.
“This Family Almanac,” says the New England historian already mentioned, “was a guide, counsellor and friend; a magazine, cyclopedia and jest book.” In many a log cabin the Almanac, hung on a convenient hook, represented along with the revered Bible and the Psalm Book the whole kingdom of letters. The jottings and the commonplaces and the jokes of the Almanac became the seed bed of native literature. People wrote notes into their Almanacs, and, when they possessed books, often inscribed in these, too, notes to chronicle local and domestic happenings. At times the notes have a touch of grim humor. “This day,” so runs one such entry, “died Joseph Bellamy and went to Heaven where he can dictate and domineer no longer.” Into books were often written elaborate cautions against stealing them.
This is Hannah Moxon Her Book.
You may just within it look.
You had better not do more
For old black Satan’s at the door
And will snatch at stealing hands,
Look behind you. There He stands.
In the New England graveyards the home-made epitaphs betrayed, not humor, but at any rate the struggle of unlettered imagination to seek expression. In a few cases the epitaphs are very beautiful.
I came in the morning — it was spring And I smiled.
I walked out at noon — it was summer And I was glad.
I sat me down at even — it was autumn And I was sad.
I laid me down at night — it was winter And I slept.
In these verses is seen that mystic quality of significance, of reflection and retrospect on life which is found in the highest and greatest humor — where laughter and tears meet.
Some of the old epitaphs, too, contain humor for the beholder but quite unconscious in the author. Thus:
Beneath this Stons
Int’r’d the Bon’s
Ah Frail Remains
Of Lieut. Noah Jones.
This ancient composition made such a hit with the Jones family that they followed a not unusual custom of using it over and over again as the especial epitaph of the Jones family whether “frail” like Lieutenant Noah, or otherwise.
Out of this compound of theology and piety, of random Almanacs and odd irreverences grew up the literature of New England: and one of the earliest blossoms on the stem was that which was to become the American Humor. It reached a real blossoming first in the mind and the works of Benjamin Franklin.
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Few people will deny that Benjamin Franklin (1706- 1790) was one of the greatest men who ever lived, and greatest in the highest sense of the term. As a scientist, an inventor, an author and a patriot, he ranks among the first of mankind. His glory as one of the fathers of the republic and one of the pioneers of science, has dimmed the lesser luster of the humorist. “He snatched the lightning from the cloud, the sceptre from the tyrants,” so runs (in his memory) the happy Latin verse. It might have added “and the laughter from the gods.” Born at Boston in 1706, as number fifteen in a family of seventeen, Franklin had all the sweet uses of adversity. He learned as a child of twelve the trade of a printer, and by that back door, like so many other gifted men, entered the temple of learning. His migration to Philadelphia severed him from New England, but in the sequel his life was continental, and even wider, and his citizenship that of the world. There is no need to list here his achievements at large or the full measure of his writings. But for American Humor a great event happened when young Franklin published in Philadelphia the first of the annual editions of his Poor Richard’s Almanac.
Chapter Two . SELECTIONS FROM BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S WORKS
FRANKLIN (1706-1790) WROTE in his memoirs: “In 1732 I first published my Almanac under the name of Richard Saunders: it was continued by me about twenty-five years and commonly called Poor Richard’s Almanac. I endeavoured to make it both interesting and useful and it came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually ten thousand.” A special feature of the Almanac was what Franklin himself called “Prudent Maxims and Wise Sayings.”
PRUDENT MAXIMS AND WISE SAYINGS
HE’S THE BEST PHYSICIAN that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.
Love your neighbor, but don’t pull down your hedges. Whate’er begun in anger ends in shame.
Don’t think to hunt two hares with one dog.
Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.
None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing. A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.
God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.
He that can travel well afoot keeps a good horse. Vainglory flowereth, but beareth no fruit.
If you’d have a good servant that you like, serve yourself.
Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, supped with Infamy.
To be proud of virtue is to poison yourself with the antidote.
Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.
If you do what you should not, you must hear what you would not.
A good example is the best sermon.
Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices. Sound and sound doctrine may pass through a ram’s horn and a preacher without straightening the one or amending the other.
Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou owest, all thou hast, nor all thou canst.
Lend money to an enemy, and thou’lt gain him; to a friend, and thou’lt lose him.
If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
POOR RICHARD HELPS HIS CIRCULATION
Not the least amusing of Franklin’s quips and fancies as Poor Richard was the ingenious way in which Richard helps the sale of his almanac by posing as an astrologer and prophesying the death of Mr. Titus Leeds, his only trade rival. Leeds angrily replied by calling attention to his continued existence. No one knows if Leeds was an easy mark or a kindred spirit. Franklin rejoins but explaining that Leeds is really dead and some impostor is replacing him. When Leeds later on actually died, Franklin claims to score at last — a piece of humor too grim for our age.
RICHARD PROPHESIES LEEDS’S DEATH (1733)
INDEED this motive (the prospect of considerable profits) would have had force enough to have made me publish an Almanac many years since, had it not been overpowered by my regard for my good friend and fellow student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt.
But this obstacle (I am far from speaking of it with pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable death, who was never known to respect merit, has already prepared the mortal dart; the fatal sister has already extended her destroying shears, and that ingenious man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 min., P.M., at the very instant of the of O and $. By his own calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment; which of us is most exact, a little time will now determine.
LEEDS’S DENIAL (1734)
KIND READER:
Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something concerning an Almanack printed for the Year 1733, Said to be writ by Poor Richard or Richard Saunders, who for want of other matter was pleased to tell his Readers, that he had calculated my Nativity, and from thence predicts my Death to be the 17th of October, 1733, at 22 min past 3 a-Clock in the Afternoon, and that these Provinces may not expect to see any more of his (Titan Leeds) Performances, and this precise Predicter, who predicts to a Minute, proposes to succeed me in Writing of Almanacks; but notwithstanding his false Prediction, I have by the Mercy of God lived to write a Diary for the Year 1734, and to publish the Folly and Ignorance of this presumptuous Author.
RICHARD KILLS LEEDS AGAIN (1734)
IN THE PREFACE to my last Almanack, I foretold the death of my dear old friend and fellow-student, the learned and ingenious Mr. Titan Leeds, which was to be the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h., 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the d of O and 8. By his own calculation, he was to survive till the 26th of the same month, and expire in the time of the eclipse, near 11 o’clock, A.M. At which of these times he died, or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present writing positively assure my readers; for as much as a disorder in my own family demanded my presence, and would not permit me, as I had intended, to be with him in his last moments, to receive his last embrace, to close his eyes, and do the duty of a friend in performing the last offices to the departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively affirm whether he be dead or not; for the stars only show to the skilful what will happen in the natural and universal chain of causes and effects; but it is well known, that the events which would otherwise certainly happen, at certain times, in the course of nature, are sometimes set aside or postpon’d, for wise and good reasons, by the immediate particular disposition of Providence; which particular dispositions the stars can by no means discover or foreshow. There is, however, (and I cannot speak it without sorrow,) the strongest probability that my dear friend is no more; for there appears in his name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner; in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool, and a lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary; so that it is to be feared that pamphlet may be only a contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes, perhaps, to sell two or three years’ Almanacks still, by the sole force and virtue of Mr. Leeds’ name.
LEEDS RESURRECTS HIMSELF AND DIES
Leeds violently protested again that he was alive. Franklin denied it and then got tired of Leeds and let him go. But when Leeds really died in 1738 Franklin saw good copy in him and used it, thus:
COURTEOUS READER:
You may remember that in my first Almanac, published for the Year 1733,I predicted the Death of my dear Friend Titan Leeds, Philomat, to happen that Year on the 17th Day of October, 3 h. 29 m. P.M. But W.B. and A.B. have continued to publish Almanacks in his Name ever since; asserting for some Years that he was still living. At length when the Truth could no longer be conceal’d from the World, they confess his Death in their Almanack for 1739, but pretend that he died not till last Year, and that before his departure he had furnished them with Calculations for 7 Years to come. Ah, My Friends, these are poor Shifts and thin Disguises;...”
SENDING FELONS TO AMERICA
Franklin’s writings contain many quaint and humorous conceits in the guise of little essays such as the well-known Petition of the letter Z, The Craven Street Gazette, and the following protest, cast in humorous form, against the sending of criminals to the colonies.
WE MAY ALL REMEMBER the time when our mother country, as a mark of her parental tenderness, emptied her gaols into our habitations, “for the BETTER peopling,” as she expressed it, “of the colonies.” It is certain that no due returns have yet been made for these valuable consignments. We are therefore much in her debt on that account; and, as she is of late clamorous for the payment of all we owe her, and some of our debts are of a kind not so easily discharged, I am for doing however what is in our power. It will show our good-will as to the rest. The felons she planted among us have produced such an amazing increase, that we are now enabled to make ample remittance in the same commodity. And since the wheelbarrow law is not found effectually to reform them and many of our vessels are idle through her restraints on our trade, why should we not employ those vessels in transporting the felons to Britain?
